CHAPTER XXI
In Which the Sister Ships Once More Race Neck to Neck
That gale hit the Gullwing harder than any blow she had been through (so Mr. Barney said) since she had left Baltimore. We could not do much toward making repairs until the gale had blown out; we only cleared away the wreckage aloft, reefed everything snug, and let her drive.
Captain Bowditch worried like an old hen with a mess of ducklings. I don’t know when the old man slept. He was on deck every moment of his own watch, and I could hear him often roaring orders during our watch below.
This was the time when the fact that the Gullwing was short-handed made the crew groan. It was up and down at all hours for us. If there was a lull in the gale we were yanked out and sent aloft to risk an inch more canvas. Cap’n Joe coaxed her along every chance he saw. The thought of getting ahead of the Seamew obsessed the Old Man’s mind while he was awake, that was sure!
We discussed our chances forward with much eagerness, too. The Seamew had left us behind during the fair weather; we could make up our minds to that. But now we had a better chance. The Gullwing was better worked, short of hands as she was, than the Seamew.
I remembered vividly how Cap’n Si Somes hopped about, and bawled orders, and seemed to get in his own way when a squall came up, or the weather was unfavorable. He was a more nervous man that our skipper; and, I believed, he was nowhere near so good a seaman. At least, I had got that idea in my head, and comparing the actions of the two skippers in a squall, I guessed any unprejudiced person would have accepted my view as correct.
We came out of this blow at last, fair weather returned, and Phillis had her awning re-rigged, and was able to come on deck again, although the Atlantic billows were tumbling heavily.
All hands were busy on the new rigging. The captain had got up a spare spar and Old Tom Thornton and Stronson, went to work on that. The captain was determined to get up a new mizzen topmast and bend on new sails. Every square inch of canvas spread to the favoring breeze would aid us in the race home.
We had gotten now into the greatest ocean current in the world—the Gulf Stream. Ocean currents are mysterious phenomena. The source of energy required to set and keep the vast masses of water in motion has been productive of endless discussion.
Temperature, barometric pressure, attractive force of the moon, have all been advanced as bringing about ocean currents. Seamen believe that it is the wind that brings about certain oceanic movements. But the winds do not explain the reason entirely—not even in any single case. As to the direct action of the wind on the surface of the sea alone, it has been shown that with a wind blowing at twenty-five miles an hour the surface water would have a movement of not more than fifteen miles in the twenty-four hours! The Gulf Stream is the greatest of the Atlantic currents, if not the greatest current on the wet portion of the globe. It is really a wonderful river—a river flowing through an ocean. Its temperature is different from the surrounding waters, it is of a different color, and the edge of it can be noted almost exactly wherever a ship crosses into or out of the Gulf Stream.
This warm current starts between the coast of Cuba and the Florida reefs, and certainly with this mighty current the wind has absolutely nothing to do. The force of the current is at its maximum strength when it emerges from the Bemimi Straits, between the Bahama Bank on the east and the coast of Florida on the West. Between Fowey Rocks and Gun Gay Light the average depth of the Gulf Stream is 239 fathoms, and it runs at a speed of fifty miles in the twenty-four hours. Occasionally, under particular circumstances, it will speed up to a hundred miles in the twenty-four hours. Little wonder that homeward bound windjammers are glad to strike the Gulf Stream. After we crossed into the clear azure of that current there was a steady tug on the Gullwing’s prow.
“The women-folks are pullin’ her home with their apron strings,” chuckled Captain Bowditch.
I rigged fishing tackle for Phillis and she caught some of the smaller fish of the Gulf Stream—fish which cannot be caught in the waters even a short distance outside of the line of the current. They were brilliant trunk-fish, and angel-fish, and the like; not edible, but interesting to look at.
Shark were plentiful, too, and followed the ship like dogs, to fight for the scraps the cook flung overboard. Thank got a big hook and about a pound of fat pork (he could wheedle anything out of the black cook) bent on a strong line, and we trolled for shark.
We caught one about eight foot long; he was an ugly beast, and fought like a tiger when we got him onto the deck. He would snap at a broomstick and bite it through as neatly as we could have cut it with an axe. A sailor hates a shark just as the ordinary man ashore dislikes a snake.
“I tell you what we’ll do with him,” said Bob Promise, chuckling. “I seen it done on the old Beatrix two years ago. We ‘belled the cat’ with an old he shark, and it’s an all right trick to play on the dirty critters.”
“How d’ye do it?” asked Tom Thornton.
“Lemme have that broken broomstick,” said Bob, grabbing it. “Now watch—when he snaps at me.”
The huge fish, lying on its side, with its wicked eye watchful of us all, opened wide his jaws when Bob Promise approached. The bully was a reckless fellow, and as the shark snapped open his jaws he thrust his hand and arm into the cavity and thrust the stick upright, far back in the beast’s throat.
Thank actually screamed aloud, and I felt sick—I thought sure the foolish fellow’s arm would be snapped off between the closing jaws.
But the shark couldn’t close his jaws! That was the trick of it. The stick was thrust upright, sticking into the roof of the great mouth and into the root of the tongue. The fish was “belled” indeed.
There it writhed upon the deck, thrashing its strong tail about, its wicked eyes rolling, and evidently in awful agony.
“Now pitch him overboard,” laughed Bob Promise. “He’ll live some time that way—mebbe till he starves to death or until some of the smaller fish pitch upon him and eat his liver out. Ugh! the ugly beast!”
Somebody took a turn of the rope around the fish’s tail and in a moment the shark was swung up by the falls we had rigged. But while he hung in the air and was about to be swung over the rail, Phillis ran up to us.
“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t do it! I saw you! How could you be so dreadfully mean—Oh! Clint! how could you do such a cruel thing?”
I had been thinking all the time that it was a blamed mean piece of business; but I hadn’t had the pluck to say so!
“You stand away, Missee,” laughed Bob. “He’s all right. Overboard he goes—plop into the sea—and it will be one murderin’ old shark fixed jest right.”
“You shall not do it!” she cried, and she was so earnest and excited that she stamped her little foot upon the deck. “It is wicked and cruel.”
“Why, it ain’t nothin’ but an old shark, Missee,” growled Tom Thornton. “He ain’t fit for nothing better.”
“He’s God’s creature. God made him,” declared the child. “You’ve no right to maltreat him. It’s wicked. I won’t have it.”
She was so excited I was afraid she would get sick. I put in my oar:
“That’s all right, Philly. None of us stopped to think of that side of it. Lower away here, boys, and we’ll knock that prop out of his mouth again.”
“No you won’t!” exclaimed Bob Promise.
I stopped and looked at him. “Why, sure, Bob, you don’t mind. If the little girl doesn’t want us to do it——”
“Stow that,” said Bob, in his very ugliest tone. “That shark ain’t hers. I put that stick there. I want to see the man that’ll pull it out,” and he swelled up like a turkey-cock and acted as though he thought he was the biggest man who ever stepped on the Gullwing’s deck.
But if he had been twice as big I reckon I should have stepped up to him! To have anybody speak before Phillis as he did was not to be endured. Thankful Polk flamed up, too, until you could have touched off a match on his face. Old Tom Thornton reached an arm across and put me back as lightly as though I had been a feather, and seized the rope above Bob’s hand.
“Drop it, you landcrab!” he growled. Old Tom seldom got angry; when he did we knew enough to stand from under!
And then appeared Dao Singh. How he had heard the racket I do not know. Light as a panther, and with an eye wickeder than the shark’s own, he slid along the deck and stood right at the other elbow of the bully.
“Let the rope go, as Webb Sahib say,” he hissed into Bob’s ear.
The bully was as amazed as he could well be and keep on his pins. He stepped back and glared from Thank and me to Old Tom, and then around at Singh.
“Holy mackerel!” he murmured. “Do the hull of ye’s want the blamed fish? Then, take him!”
The watch burst out laughing. Mr. Barney had himself come forward, and now he spoke.
“Get a harpoon, Webb, and kill the beast at once. That will settle the controversy. I’m not sure that the little one isn’t right. We’re all too big to torture even such a beast as a shark.”
That was the kind of influence Phillis Duane had over all of us. The captain had her on the bridge with him and showed her everything he did when he took the sun’s altitude, and all that. Mr. Gates talked with her by the hour. Mr. Barney was forever finding something new with which she could amuse herself. And the black cook and Dao Singh almost came to blows over who should wait upon her the most.
Then came the day when, off Hatteras, we sighted another four-masted ship. She crept out of a fogbank to leeward of us and it was some time before we saw her clearly enough to be sure. That she was tacking northward was the main fact at first which urged us to believe it was our sister ship.
But in an hour it came clearer, and we could be sure. It was the Seamew, standing in very prettily, and it was plain she had sighted us, too. We tacked and her course brought her across our stern. We ran so near the captains could hail each other. Old Cap’n Si waved his glass and shouted:
“We’re about to bid you a fond farewell, Joe! Next tack will put us ahead of you. That apple’s mine, by jolly!”
“Seems to me if I had such a great craft as the Seamew, I’d have got farther ahead than you be now,” returned our skipper, with scorn. “I reckon the race ain’t over yet.”
“It’s pretty near over. We got good weather comin’. The Seamew can walk away with you in a fair wind.”
“All right. Brag’s a good dog, but Holdfast’s a better one,” said Cap’n Joe. “Wait till we sight the Capes o’ Virginia.”
She was too far away from us then for Cap’n Si to shout again. The rest of us had grinned or scowled at the men aboard the Seamew, as our natures dictated. I had noticed that the boat found adrift with Singh and Phillis in it, had been hoisted aboard the Seamew and was lashed amidships.
Away we went on our tack, came about, and again neared our rival. The Seamew was not pulling away from us much; the wind was heavy. The Gullwing crept up on her and, finally, when the Seamew tacked again, we did the same and she had no chance to cross our bows, even had she been able to.
So we sailed, neck and neck, not half a mile from each other, both ships plunging through the swells with a line of white foam under their quarters, and well heeled over to the wind. Whichever won the race—whether the Gullwing or the Seamew—it would be a good fight.